This build has been archived by the author. They are no longer supporting nor updating this build and it may have become outdated. As such, voting and commenting have been disabled and it no longer appears in regular search results.
We recommend you take a look at this author's other builds.
This guide has not yet been updated for the current season. Please keep this in mind while reading. You can see the most recently updated guides on the browse guides page






Your votes and comments encourage our guide authors to continue
creating helpful guides for the League of Legends community.
Choose Champion Build:
Spells:
Ghost
Heal
Ability Order
The Relentless Storm (PASSIVE)
Volibear Passive Ability
Introduction

This guide will help you navigate all of the options for building a strong Volitank. My focus in this guide is creating a pure tank that can initiate and survive huge amounts of damage. If you are looking to build a Tanky-DPS, check out Killjaden's Guide.
Team 1 is my recommended



+ Fantastic Chaser + Can throw people into fricken turrets! + Strong duelist + Great teamfight damage with Ultimate |
SPACE | SPACE |
- Very long cooldowns on all abilities - Fling sometimes fails - Susceptible to ignite locking - Heavily gear reliant for farming |

This ability scales very well with health, but the down side is that if the other team is bursty they can kill you before you can benefit from this ability; however, it has saved my hide on numerous occasions (yeah, I knew you were waiting for an unbearable pun).

This ability is ridiculously effective for feeding a lane partner or tossing enemies towards a turret. The speed boost allows


This ability is great because it provides both passive attack speed as well as an active damage dealer. The 18 second cooldown means it is not going to be a spammable ability, and since it gains 1% damage for every 1% health your target is missing this is an excellent execute ability (


This only scales with 0.6 AP, which makes stacking AP fairly useless. I like to use this about 1 second after


This only scales with 0.3 AP, and with such a long cooldown it is not worth stacking AP at all. This is an on-hit effect, so the faster you attack the more you trigger it. Whether in a team fight or 1v1 duel, this ability turns






-
Mercury's Treads are my go-to boots for Volibear since he lacks any sort of escape tool. The treads reduce the duration of disables and provide magic resistance.
-
Warmog's Armor scales very well with
Frenzy and
The Relentless Storm, and gives Volibear a solid health pool to make him more durable.
-
Frozen Mallet provides a lot of health, and I really like being able to keep my target snared so that my teammates have an easier time burning enemies down.
-
Sunfire Cape provides both defense and damage. I love this item because
Volibear needs to be in the thick of things, and there is no limit on the number of critters it can hit at once.
-
Banshee's Veil provides Volibear with magic resist, health, and a shield. I prefer this item to
Force of Nature because the stats are hands down better for
Volibear.
-
Guardian Angel is a very nice item for Volibear. It provides both Armor and Magic resist which help make him more durable. It is also a neat little trick for Volibear, because while "dead" Volibear's
The Relentless Storm will refill his health (if it is not already on cooldown) along with the 750 health the item already returns.
-
Thornmail is an amazing final item against AD champions, like
Tryndamere, who hit incredibly hard.
-
Atma's Impaler is about the most cost effective physical damage item you can pair with
Warmog's Armor, and provides a medium amount of armor. This is a great single target DPS item, but as a tank I prefer
Sunfire Aegis.
-
Wit's End provides everything a DPS
Volibear could ever want: attack speed, on-hit damage, and magic resistance. But since this is not a DPS variant I go for items built more for survival (though this item does make it's way into the anti-AP build).
-
Randuin's Omen is such a great mix of utility, armor, and health that it is a difficult item to leave out of a tank build. Any build where I do not use the
Frozen Mallet, I take Randiun's Omen instead (and it is in my Ranked build).
-
Quicksilver Sash is a great item for Champions like
Volibear that lack escape tools. It is better than
Cleanse simply because it also removes
Ignite which is something you absolutely need to counter in Ranked games.
-
Frozen Heart provides a lot of armor, cooldown reduction, and an attack speed debuff. Decent, but not great since
Volibear should not be spamming his abilities, so the CDR is a bit of a waste.
-
Force of Nature has the highest MR of any item, but the movement speed is not that great for Volibear since he already has better options for chasing.
-
Rylai's Crystal Scepter is horrendous, hit "Back" on your web browser anytime you enter a
Volibear guide that recommends this item. He has two magic abilities, one that already has a better snare, the other with such poor AP scaling and such a long cooldown that taking this item is beyond idiotic.
Frozen Mallet is simply superior.
-
Rod of Ages may have some good health, but the AP is a waste and there are much better items out there for our fuzzy friend. As noted above, back out of any guide recommending this.
-
Guinsoo's Rageblade ...really? I could go on, but at this point I will just say this: do not ever take AP gear on
Volibear, and do not listen to anyone who ever tells you that it is good on him.
Boots and
Health Potions help keep
Volibear in the lane early on in the game.
Phage needs to be rushed because it provides a key snare, as well as health.
Sunfire Aegis provides minion farming power (more gold), and is great in team fights so I build it as early as possible.
- I build the rest as evenly as possible, leaving the
Frozen Mallet for last because the benefit of finishing it early is minimal.











14.6k effective health against both AP and AD, this brings a balanced combination of utility and survival to

16.9k effective health versus AD. The great thing about having

16.6k effective health against Magic Damage. In keeping my with mentality of always having one combo item, I replaced


This provides balanced stats against all damage types (just under 14k effective health), solid utility and damage for team fights, and a counter to the bane of



Well, ok, do this if you are bored and want to mess around in a bot game... but seriously, do not do this to your team in a normal match. The upside: you have 18k effective health and a stupidly hard-hitting



Consider this: Warmogs provides 1270 health when it is maxed. That is +228 damage when Frenzy is used. Compare that to what I get out of just about any DPS item in the same 18 second interval...
Adding in Wit's End alone makes up for that in less than 4 seconds (Wit's is roughly a 66 DPS gain, bear minimum). 1 Wit's End blows 3 Warmog's out of the water for DPS, and costs 7000g less. So now lets take the



-
Heal gives some extra survivability, it is useful if your team lacks a proper healer.
-
Exhaust provides an extra way to snare and reduce incoming burst, this is a great pick if I choose
Randuin's Omen instead of the
Frozen Mallet.
-
Flash is an fantastic escape tool, and can be used to teleport over walls.
-
Ghost is completely preferential and has similar usage to
Flash. I like taking it because it is buffed by our masteries.
-
Ignite is a great choice if less than 2 people on your team pick it up. It keeps your enemies from healing up enough to survive. Not my first pick on a tank, though.
-
Teleport is great for getting to team fights quickly or rescuing a turret. I pick this up reasonably often if I do not have at least 2-3 teammates with it already.
-
Cleanse can provide an extra way out of being focused down, and with the new buffed version it is a very tempting Summoner Spell, but to be honest
Quicksilver Sash is flat out better.
-
Smite is good for jungling, and only jungling. Only take it if that is what role you are filling.
- Greater Mark of Desolation reduces enemy armor for those big
Frenzy hits,
Greater Mark of Attack Speed is also decent since it provides Attack speed which buffs
Volibear's Ultimate.
- Greater Seal of Vitality provides a lot of health by level 18, but the newly added greater seal of endurance is even better if you have at least 4000 health, though it is more expensive.
Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist provides Volibear with some solid Magic Resistance, which is something I feel most of his item builds tend to lack.
- Greater Quintessence of vitality is great for boosting
Volibear's health even higher, but again, Greater Quintessence of endurance is better for any Champion with more than 4k health.

- AR: Armor, provides protection against physical damage.
- MR: Magic Resist, protects against magical damage.
- CDR: Cooldown Reduction.
- DPS: Damage Per Second - a measurement of the damage output a champion can do broken into one second segments (generally used in MMO's as a reference to damage dealers).
- AD: Attack Damage, this refers to classes who deal Physical damage.
- AP: Ability Power, the stat that boosts magic damage dealt by many abilitys, and a blanket term for classes that deal Magical damage.
- Carry: Generally refers to a class that you feed lots of gold (giving them killing blows on minions and Champions) so they can build high damage items quickly (
Ashe or
Brand are prime exampes).
- Tanky-DPS: A class that acts as a sort of off-tank, they can take more damage than the average champion, and deal a good amount of damage to boot, but they are neither the team's main tank, nor a primary damage dealer (carry).
- Mob/Creep: A term used for either aggressive or neutral minions and creatures.
- AoE or AE: Area of Effect, this refers to abilities that deal damage to an area (or multiple creatures) rather than a single target.
- On-Hit Effect: This means that every time you hit an enemy with a basic attack, the on-hit effect (usually magic damage on an item like
Wit's End) is applied.
- Effective Health: The amount of damage you absorb based on a combination of armor or magic resistance and your health pool. To figure it out, take your health pool and divide by what a player would deal to you in damage. With 60% mitigation from armor an AD carry would only deal 40% of their base damage to you. If you have 4000 health, they would need to deal the equivalent of 10k unmodified damage to kill you (4000 / 0.4 = 10000). Effective Health (against both magical and physical damage) is much more important than health alone.
Useful Links - Jhoijhoi's Guide to making a Guide - This was instrumental in helping my create my first guide.
- Jungling 101
- Warding Helper
- In-Depth Item Guide
- Volibear, the top of the food chain - best Tanky-DPS guide around
You must be logged in to comment. Please login or register.